Good news for Dot!

As many of you know, we adopted Dorothy on Jan 22, and I took her to the vet for a wellness checkup on Monday the 24th. Since she had been drinking a LOT of water and meowing ALL NIGHT LONG (), I mentioned it to the vet because I had read on here that those could be symptoms of hyperthyroidism. They decided to do a blood panel. (I knew the 'free exam' certificate included with her adoption wouldn't be free!!)

The next day I found out she did, indeed, have hyperthypoidism, and slightly elevated liver levels, but the vet didn't say much about the liver. She said the HT makes her think she's closer to 10 years old than the shelter's estimated 5. Then I saw in her file they made up her birthyear of 2002 instead of 2005. OK, so we'll say she's gonna be 9 in May (her shelter impound date/arbitrary birthday) So... I picked up some thyoid pills and have been giving 2.5mg 2x a day. These pills are awesome, they're chewable flavored treats. Not cheap though, so when we're running low, I may ask about regular tablets and use Pill Pockets, which she also likes. The vet said we should recheck her blood in a month too see if the meds are working and if the dose is right, and to check blood pressure, and also that HT sometimes hides kidney problems, so to check for that. THE SUSPENSE!!!

However, after just 2 days on the pills, Dot stopped meowing like a maniac at night, so I figured they must be doing something...

Long story longer...

I took her in for her blood re-check and BP yesterday, and BP was great! I've been anxiously waiting for a call back about the blood results (they said sometime this week). About a half hour ago my phone made the noise for a voice mail. I didn't hear it ring!! So I listened, it was the vet.

Dorothy's thyroid and other levels are GREAT!!! I am so relieved that the pills are doing their job and that there aren't any underlying kidney or other problems.

My Polka Dot is OK!!!

So in the meantime the 'old lady' continues to act more kittenish than 3 and a half year old Genever, playing all the time, getting into things she shouldn't (G-cat almost never gets into things. she's kind of too perfect.. ), waking us up in the early morning and middle of the night by walking on our faces, etc. I love this cat. We got so lucky to have adopted 2 awesome cats!!

I had to use butter with metro when Genever had giardia way back when, and pill pockets didn't hide the bitterness. So we had to go the shove-the-pill-in-the-throat route. Oh, it was a very not fun 10 days. But the butter helped.

But since Genever has her daily prednisolone in a half pill pocket anyway, I figure it would work for Dorothy too.

I am just so relieved to hear that the meds are working as they should and there aren't any other problems. I've been worried since we got the first test results at the end of January, wondering if the meds will work, if her kidneys will be ok, etc. Yay!!!

Thanks. It's so weird how things must happen for a reason, since we went to the shelter to get the cat I fell in love with the day before, but she'd already been adopted. And then there was "Sara Sue" who had been there since MAY!! She seemed pretty cool, so we decided to take her home. I'm so glad we did. Even BF (one of those 'non-cat-people' ) is always saying how lucky we are to have 2 awesome cats.

I just uploaded some good pics to Photobucket last night... posting to come soon!!!